Tag Archives: adolescence

Shaw Cuts through the Bull

By Robin Bates | Published: November 19, 2009

Last night I gave a short lecture and then moderated a talkback following a college production of George Bernard Shaw’s play Arms and the Man (1894), directed by my colleague Michael Ellis-Tolaydo.  I hadn’t read the play since I was in high school, when I went on a Shaw kick.  (I first became enamored with […]

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She Stoops to Circumvent Inhibitions

By Robin Bates | Published: November 16, 2009

Oliver Goldsmith     Discussions in my 18th Century Couples Comedy class are proving to be a lot of fun because, almost seamlessly, we move between the 18th courtship scene, challenges faced by young people today, and contemporary movies and television shows.  Comedy rushes in where wise men fear to tread, giving us a way to talk […]

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Bridging the 18th-Century Generation Gap

By Robin Bates | Published: November 4, 2009

Yesterday my 18th Century Couples Comedy class concluded our discussion of Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones. We spent a lot of time talking about how it was popular with youthful readers in the 18th century, an idea I owe to J. Paul Hunter, my dissertation director at Emory University. Paul explores the issue in Before Novels: […]

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The Rebellious Thrill of Gothics

By Robin Bates | Published: September 30, 2009

Emily in the Castle of Udolpho In yesterday’s post I discussed anxious parents and proposed Northanger Abbey as a sane approach to teenage reading (and movie watching and internet using). I elaborate here. I start first with the reading material in question. Heroine Catherine Moreland and her best friend Isabella Thorpe are enthralled with the […]

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Mocking Adult Anxieties about Novels

By Robin Bates | Published: September 29, 2009

“Before,” by William Hogarth (1736) What can happen to your daughters if they read novels? According to William Hogarth, something like the above. Check out the lower left hand corner where a side table is falling over. The drawer has been left casually but deliberately open so that one can see the book that is […]

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Danger: Georgian Teens Reading Novels

By Robin Bates | Published: September 28, 2009

Samuel Johnson  If we need proof that adolescence has always been a difficult age, we can look at those 18th century moralists that were panicked about young people reading novels. Of course if you’re young (to build off of a comment that Barbara makes in response to Friday’s post), part of the fun of reading […]

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I Was a Secret Holden Caulfield

By Robin Bates | Published: September 10, 2009

I contrasted Lord of the Rings with J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye the other day.    It’s not a contrast that anyone other than I would make, and it’s all based on the fact that I loved the one and hated the other.  In my post today I explore my dislike of the Salinger […]

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Fantasy: Help or Hindrance?

By Robin Bates | Published: September 8, 2009

My friend Alan Paskow, who is struggling with cancer, queried me about my post on Alfred Noyes’ “The Highwayman,” wondering whether the poem wasn’t just an insubstantial fantasy. I’ve been writing about The Lord of the Rings as a fantasy perhaps indulged in by a World War I veteran who wasn’t willing to face up […]

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Aspiring to Be a Dwarf

By Robin Bates | Published: September 4, 2009

Continuing the Lord of the Rings discussion, here’s an interesting insight passed on to me by my friend Rachel Kranz about my last entry.  I was interpreting my adolescent fondness for Gimli the dwarf as an indication that I felt myself a dwarf, hunkered down and plodding.  Rachel says that she was stunned by this self-description […]

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